THE NEW YOR.KER. room where he pursues the tenacious, spidery arts of legal consultation and advocacy. His sons' unending studies, the immemorial N uorese inertia that seems to lie in their bones infuriate Don Sebastiano. Do the children of millionaires in distant, phantasmago- ric America not earn a youthful living selling newspapers? Donna Vincenza, goaded past martyrdom by her hus- band's cold anger, by the pressures upon her sere frame of housework, cloistered monotony, and carnal disap- pointments as numbing as old dreams, protests. People in America "have ev- ery comfort," she says. "They're not like us." Her husband's reply is one of the most savage sentences in litera- ture-it is, literally, a death sentence: "Tu stai al mondo soltanto perchè c'è posto." Creagh's translation- "You're only in this world because there's room for you"-is more or less exact, but falls short. The Italian con- notes an obscure, predestined niche in which insignificant, captive lives are inserted and from which there is no escape. And it is just this lack of escape that gives to such lives their utterly humiliating contingent rationale. There is a sense in which the en- tirety of the work spirals out of this chilling verdict. In N uoro, it can be said of almost all men, women, and beasts that they are on this incinerated native ground solely because there was some passing entry for them in the Doomsday Book of works and days. Maestro F adda, with the dolorous fea- tures of an Etruscan king, is there to teach the fourth and fifth grades in the Nuoro school and to amuse the idlers at the café. Chischeddu "was one of those wrecks who for some unknown reason drift into churches, and are allowed by God or the vicar to take part in the life of the spirit as vergers or sacristans." Fileddu, the half-wit, is the licensed jester when the winds blow like banked fires out of Africa. Do any of these bespoken lives have reality? Take Pietro Catte: There is not the least doubt that Pietro Catte in the abstract has no reality, any more than any other man on the face of the earth. But the fact remains that he was born and that he died, as those irrefutable certificates prove. And this endows him with reality in actual fact, because birth and death are the two moments at which the infinite becomes finite; and the infinite can have no being except through the fi- nite. Pietro Catte attempted to escape from reality by hanging himself on that tree at Biscollai, but his was a vain hope, because one cannot erase one's own birth. This is why I say that Pietro Catte, like all the hapless characters in this story, is im- 117 An Italian monk baked the first pretzel, " but it took a socialite to invent the brassiere. , ). , {ij . From Band-Aids .. ; '4 to bu?blegmn, ... " 1m ì " ." . " marnage i I.: ! ,.' customs to EXTRAORDINARY I i . J:I=ed d ORIGI S OF :j he;:=l EVERYDAY .: "I!II dhi es. T H I"T GS than 500 of l' these amusing, CHARLES PANATI g D iscover the fascinating stories stories are in the behind the origins of_ latest book from the over 500 everyday items, expressions, and <<, author of The customs such as Kleenex, Barbie ;,J Browsers _ dolls, and the Boy Scouts, Slinky, ': 1 Book of _ the can opener, and Mother Beginnings. - Goose, Tupperware, nad :1 polish, and safety pins, < I Vahum, doughnuts, and honeyrrwons, the zipper, potato .." chips, the bikini, and UnclR Sam t ! . , ..: : I '" '>, " '- '" : - 15:' \ In paperback. 464 pages, illustrated with period drawings. $9.95 (extraordinary!) -<:. '-0-. PERENNIAL LIBRARY HARPER &. ROW PUBLISHERS After Nicholas, narcissism will never look the same. ., '. "# "'" ^ ., *, .....:. .. " '\ . ,, . -- . I lOOK DIVINE a novel Chri./topher Coe liAs good as they come; it could not be better:' I IJ(KNCR -Doris Grumboch CjfIELDS c Houghton Mifflin Company 1987 Jacket Bascove @ 1987 ,4 ') ., I r . I " i . , WnttenandPerformedby LOUIS MUSTILLO Directed by JANIS POWELL Previews October 16 Opens October 21 Tickets On Sale Now Call 212-307-7171 T'CK 7i R Susan Bloch Theatre 307 West 26 Street Originally Presented by Second Story Ensemble